The debate in legal publishing circles continues with regard to retro case law builds. Does anyone really need them? If so, which ones and why? Do any of retro builds in the planning or development stages have any real value to the legal researcher?

Unreported court cases that pre-date 1970. Boxes and boxes of older full text court cases that were not reported in print law report series still haunt some court houses and some legal publishers. What should be done with them? Tens of thousands of these cases exist in hardcopy and rest heavy on the consciences of those . . . [more]

Ah, the unreported judgment…or in this case Order. Sometimes, interesting tidbits come out of discussions that flow to my ears via conversations from our lunchroom.

The walls of the Harvey A. Bodner Q.C. Lounge, named after one of my favourite former bosses, recently absorbed a conversation regarding a Masters order that an student-at-law heard about in passing from a professor regarding an order for substitutional service via Facebook.

The rumour made its way to me and thanks to the great memory of many individuals, including Professor Billingsley who supplied me with an action number, and our students who never complain . . . [more]

This is a stub posting on this morning’s Bell decision from the Supreme Court (with the headnote) until we can figure out what its implications are: Bell Canada v. Bell Aliant Regional Communications, 2009 SCC 40, . . . [more]

I was recently introduced to one of Canada’s Military Judges, learning that there are only four such judicial officers, which made me realize how little I know not simply about military law but also about the very structure of the military justice system. I suspect that many, if not most, of our readers are equally unaware of this structure, so I thought I’d provide a few links for the curious to follow.

For an overview, look at the Military Law and Military Justice pages of the Judge Advocate General’s website. As well, there is a clear and well written overview . . . [more]

When I got back from vacation just over a week ago I discovered there was an elephant in the room: a possible looming federal election that no one really wanted to discuss. Except, perhaps, the media. We’ve even avoided discussing it here on Slaw for whatever reason (are we just too polite to talk politics in public? How very Canadian). In the meantime we have a lovely trio of election-related controversies from which to sample: . . . [more]

The August 2009 issue [pdf] of the Ontario Bar Association’s magazine Briefly Speaking/EnBref has an article by David Whelan, Manager, Legal Information for the Law Society of Upper Canada on using free and inexpensive legal research tools called “Right Size Your Research”–see pages 24 and 25 [pdf]. I like that he emphasizes texts as a starting point, and of course endorses use of law libraries as a helpful resource. This is a nice round-up of resources for those looking to economize, especially for legal researchers who do not already have flat rate subscriptions to major online legal research . . . [more]

There are few things more secret within lawfirms than the process of determining equity partnership admission and partner compensation. Even if there are disputes they’re handled behind closed doors or in the leak-proof process of arbitration. There are only a handful of reported cases on such issues involving the largest firms.

Which makes the travails of McCarthy Tétrault particularly newsworthy – although the reactions of many managing partners may well be to thank the relevant deity that it wasn’t their firm.

A former McCarthy Tétrault lawyer is suing the firm for $12 million dollars over an equity partnership admission dispute. . . . [more]

Class action settlements — perhaps a bit arcane for a blog post, but a gripper if you are defending a class action.

Class action proceedings can be lengthy. The certification process easily adds an extra two years to the proceeding. Not surprisingly, defendants peripheral to the plaintiff’s case often look for an early exit.

In conventional actions, plaintiffs often throw a wide net hoping to find one or more defendants at fault.

Class proceedings have called for different strategies. Plaintiff have the onus of constructing a case with common issues of liability or damages. The common issues must advance the . . . [more]

A couple of days ago I was at the Supreme Court to discuss potential improvements to the Supreme Court decision website. Some of you probably noticed that over the last year LexUM greatly expanded the scope of decisions available on this site. We now have everything back to 1949, as well as everything from Ontario and BC back to 1876. If everything continues to go according to plan, all of the decisions ever published in the Supreme Court Report will be freely available online before next spring. With content becoming exhaustive, we are now looking to improve the feature . . . [more]

This is just a quick note to say that I’ve added announcements of recent Supreme Court decisions to the roster of Twitter feeds at CanCourts (cancourts.ca). As with announcements about court of appeal judgments from Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec, these are provided by the RSS feed from CanLII, and so they are a week or more behind the actual release date.

I should mention that this link between the RSS feeds and Twitter depends upon a free service provided by RSS2Twitter.com. They depend on donations, so if you use these feeds you might feel like supporting . . . [more]

I’ve pushed a few of CanLII’s RSS feeds to Twitter, thinking that some folks might find it handy to learn when new judgments are available. Specifically, I’ve created Twitter accounts for announcements about new Court of Appeal judgments from British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. I’ll likely add accounts for other courts of appeal in due course. (I’ve checked with CanLII and they’re comfortable with this.)

I’ve gathered these under the rubric CanCourts and have put up a simple website explaining what I’ve done.

Please let me know if you experience any difficulties using these Twitter feeds. . . . [more]

The front page of today’s Globe and Mail sports a big photo of Ontario MPP Lisa MacLeod attached to the article “Can a busy female politician give reliable evidence? A judge says no” by Jane Taber. The lead paragraph runs as follows:

Lisa MacLeod is a young female politician who commutes to her job at Queen’s Park from Ottawa and leaves her husband, Joe, and four-year-old daughter, Victoria, at home. Mr. Justice Douglas Cunningham of Ontario Superior Court said this is a big distraction for the 34-year-old woman and as a result he felt he could not accept